Kvaerner Awarded Contract
To Build Floating Air Base

PARIS -- Kvaerner ASA is drawing up preliminary designs for a vast floating U.S. air base that could be shifted around the world and would carry as many as 10,000 military personnel.

The European engineering group has been awarded a $6 million contract by the U.S. Defense Department's Office of Naval Research to conduct a feasibility study on the proposed mobile offshore base, known as SeaBase, according to Per Herbert Kristensen, president of Kvaerner's maritime division. Mr. Kristensen said the 1.6-kilometer-long base, if...